When criticizing other parties, we must also criticize ourselves. The published lists of candidates for the district Dumas of Petrograd have revealed two deficiencies in our party organization and work.

The first deficiency. In the Liteiny district, our list contains only 33 candidates against 63 from the Cadets and from the bloc of Mensheviks with the "Unity" group and the Populists. Clearly, in this wealthy district, our party workers could find no more than 33 candidates for a proletarian party. But this is an obvious deficiency in our work, an obvious indication that we have not sufficiently descended "to the depths" of the laboring and exploited masses. We must break with established customs; we must go especially energetically "to the people" in wealthy quarters, raising new layers of the laboring and exploited masses to conscious life. We should have attracted non-party proletarian elements—especially, for example, from domestic servants—to participate in the elections and fearlessly included the most reliable of them in the proletarian list. Why should we fear a minority of non-party proletarian elements if the majority belongs to conscious proletarians—internationalists?...[12]

Written between May 23 and 27 (June 5 and 9), 1917

First published in 1928 in Lenin Miscellany VII

Printed from the manuscript